


Thank You Not For Sharing

by shipwreckblue



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Autistic Jon Sims, Begins at the start of Season 4, Canon-Typical Jared Hopworth, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Struggles with Suicidal Ideation, The Magnus Archives but Everyone Can Say Fuck, Tim Lives AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-11
Updated: 2019-08-11
Packaged: 2020-08-14 15:40:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20194657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shipwreckblue/pseuds/shipwreckblue
Summary: All Tim had really wanted from the Unknowing was to go out with a bang. When he hit the detonator in that wax museum he was certain it was the last thing he'd ever do- But he was wrong. Now, six months after his frankly miraculous survival, the Archives are in shambles, and the man- or monster -responsible for all of it is suddenly back from his supernatural coma. Dead, alive, or somewhere in between, Jon is still disastrous as ever, and Tim would really love to keep hating him for it. Unfortunately, things are not that simple.Written for the Rusty Quill Big Bang 2019, with companion art fromMalaRoots!





	Thank You Not For Sharing

**Author's Note:**

> It shocked me that no one had written a "Tim Lives" fic after so long since the S3 Finale- Although honestly his death made so much narrative sense, it seems almost unfair to try and write around it. But I did it anyway, because it's my city now, and I love him! Title from Brendan Maclean's "Not Your Call." 
> 
> [Excellent, gorgeous art by Mala](https://malaroots.tumblr.com/) as a companion piece (Spoilers for later chapters)! Mala, you're fantastic and this fic is for you!

Tim was cutting his hair when he got the call. He was using the shitty Archives bathroom mirror because even though the toilets up on the second floor of the Institute were much nicer in general, there was the possibility of being walked in on. To be fair, no one would dare ask what he was doing, why he’d rather not risk going to a barber, what his problem was having a stranger stand behind him with scissors. No one really asked questions about the Archives anymore, or the people who worked there. But altogether Tim would rather avoid the stares. 

He’d finished cleaning up the back with the pop-up clippers on his electric razor, and was tidying the top using Martin’s old desk scissors when his phone buzzed. Basira’s name was glowing on the screen as he picked it up from the toilet tank. Tim grimaced at it for a second, then answered.

“Hey,” said Basira, before he had time to open his mouth. “I said I’d call if there were any developments; well, there’s been a development.” 

Tim set down the scissors, leaned against the rim of the sink and sighed, staring at his own scratched and fuzzy reflection. “Is he dead?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied shortly. “Not anymore.” 

“Okay.” Tim tightened his grip on the porcelain for a second, then straightened up. “Okay. I’ll be there in ten.”

“Right,” Basira said, sharp as one of her nods, and hung up. 

Tim stared at his dark phone screen for a second, then woke it up, ordered a cab, and shut it back off. He pocketed the device and looked in the mirror again. His hair was still a little messy, but it was passable. Same with the rest of him, if he were totally honest. 

“Couldn’t just let it go, boss, could you,” he muttered, turning the tap on and washing some of the clippings down the drain. “Getting knocked down once wasn’t enough. Had to see the bloody thing through.” He had a distinct impression, as he usually did in the Archives, that someone was probably listening, and it was probably no one good.

“Yeah, you hear it all, don’t you,” Tim said, shutting off the water. “You just don’t ever _ listen."   
_

All told, it took longer than ten minutes for the cab to take him to hospital, and for him to find reception. He asked for Jonathan Sims, then followed the extensive directions through several wide, sterile hallways until he reached what had to be some kind of coma unit. There was nobody clustered around the door of 142, which had _ J. Sims _ on the whiteboard underneath it in very faded marker. Whether or not this was a good sign, Tim had no idea. He knocked. 

A tall woman in green dungarees, whom Tim had never seen before, yanked the door open. She looked equally as surprised to see him. “Sorry, who’re you?” She demanded, sounding exceedingly strung out. “I thought I called for a nurse.”

“I _ told _ you not to, Georgie, they’re just going to quarantine me for tests,” came Jon’s voice from inside, raspy but infinitely recognizable.

“_Jon, _ you weren’t-” The woman, Georgie, turned over her shoulder and let out a growl of frustration. “You weren’t _ breathing _ the last time I came to see you, I’d say you ought to have a few tests done!” 

Tim squinted at her. “Huh, well that's new.” He inclined his head towards the door. “Can I come in, or-?” 

"I called him." Basira's voice carried bluntly from further inside the room.

Frazzled, Georgie looked back to him, then shouldered the door open quickly. “Oh, well. God, all right- Better get in fast, then, if we’re all insistent on staying _ covert.” _ She hissed the last word in the direction of the hospital bed, where Jon was propped up in an overlarge hospital gown.

“Jesus Christ,” Tim said as he entered, almost involuntary. “You look like shit.” It was true, although it had little to do with the new scars, or the extra grey in his hair, or even that he clearly hadn't washed in a long time. There was something else, a deep, visible exhaustion.

Tim was expecting maybe a patented sneer in response to the jibe, but Jon seemed too busy staring at him with something bordering on wonderment. “I… You don’t. Look awful, I mean. I _mean,_ they said it’s been six months, but…” 

“Yeah, I’ve been to some rehab. Got a bad knee now,” Tim said, digging his nails into his palms and flicking his gaze to the room’s opposite corner, where Basira was standing. “How long has he been-”

“Awake like this? Only a few minutes.” She shook her head. “Good you’re here, though. I wanted a second opinion.”

“On what?” Georgie asked, while at the same time Jon rasped, “Excuse me?” 

Basira ignored both of them and took a step closer to Tim. “You said you’ve gotten pretty good by now, at telling if people are… Themselves, or, something else.” She tilted her head towards the bed. “So what’s the verdict?” 

“Oh.” Something in his chest tightened, a familiar clench, and he remembered Sasha’s- _Not_ Sasha’s - heavy floral perfume. “Right. Well, that’s his voice on the tapes, if that’s what you mean.” 

“Hm.” Basira folded her arms. “Dunno. I think it’s a little more complicated than him just being replaced.” 

“I’m right here_,_” Jon said, a bit petulant, and tried to sit himself up further.

Georgie put a hand on his chest. “I said _stop _ it! I don’t care if you- You shouldn't be exerting yourself like this. This isn’t right, Jon.” 

“Well, w-what’s_ wrong _ with me?” He challenged, tremulous but exasperated.

“That’s the problem! Six months in a coma, and something _ should _ be!” Georgie tossed both her arms up. “But I catch some,_ weird_ guy by your bedside, and the next thing I know you're snapping at me like nothing happened? Honestly you have a lot of nerve, insisting you’re fine-” 

“I- Wh- Sorry to, to _ disappoint _ you, then!” Jon snapped, finally struggling up onto one elbow. “If it’s such a-” 

Tim interrupted with a grunt. “Definitely not a replacement. Too much of a pain in the ass.” 

Jon started to respond with something hoarse and indignant, but Georgie rounded on him first. “Sorry, look, _ who _ are you? I called _ Melanie, _ but she wouldn’t pick up and now it looks like practically the whole rest of the archival staff has decided to show up- “

Tim’s body went cold at the mention of her name, and for a minute Georgie’s voice faded out below the sound of squelching, crunching, crackling in his head. He sat down the nearest place he could, which happened to be on the edge of Jon’s mattress, making two fists on top of his thighs. He stared at the floor.

“Shit,” Basira muttered, then louder, “Listen, I told you- Melanie can’t be here, okay? She just- it’s not happening.” 

“I know what you said.” Georgie shot back waspishly. “That doesn’t answer any of my questions, though, I-”

“I’m Tim Stoker,” he ground out through his clenched jaw. “I was in the wax museum when it collapsed. Actually, I’m the one who blew it to hell.” 

“Oh, you_ did, _” Jon murmured from the head of the bed. “You had the… Yes, I saw it…”

Distantly, Tim could hear Georgie scoff, focusing in on him with a note of accusation in her voice. "You were- Wait, so you're telling me _you_ did this? The whole-" 

"He didn't, not like that," Jon interrupted hurriedly, and the mattress shifted, creaking, as if he were trying to physically plant himself between Tim and Georgie. Tim felt dimly surprised, and then repulsed. He didn't move.

“Jon, for god’s sake, lay _back,_ ” said Georgie, returning to her original state of anxious distress.

In his periphery, Tim could see Jon batting her off weakly. “Georgie, _please,_ there’s nothing wrong with me!” 

“Fine,” she snapped suddenly, and then, “All right! _ Fine! _ Take care of yourself, then!” 

Jon reached out to her, but she was already leaving, her bag swinging on her shoulder and her hair whipping as she turned around. He protested. “Georgie, I don’t know what-” 

She waved a frustrated hand over her shoulder. “I can’t be here, okay? Not anymore, just- Get better, I hope you get better.” 

“I _ am _ better,” Jon said, bewildered, but the door was already shut behind her. “I’m-” he coughed, dry and painful. 

“Uh. Yeah, I can go get some water,” suggested Basira, sounding both awkward and relieved after Georgie’s abrupt exit. 

Jon shook his head, forcing himself further upright. “No, no, I- The uh, the statement, in your, in your bag.” 

Finally, Tim looked up. “Sorry?”

“The statement,” Jon repeated, pointing. 

Basira undid the clasp of her shoulder bag and drew out a sheath of papers held in a familiar manila folder, the case number stamp standing out black against its background. “I, brought one. Just grabbed it on my way out, I thought…”

It was not lost on Tim, the way Jon immediately sharpened as soon as she brought the statement out, leaning towards her, his eyes standing out unnaturally bright beneath the shadow of his overgrown hair, nearly shoulder-length now, and stringy. “You were right,” he said, too quickly. “I think it’d do me some good-” 

“Oh, I think the fuck not,” said Tim loudly, and both of them jumped a bit, startled, as if they’d forgotten he was in the room. “Whatever is going on with you, we are not about to go _feeding _ it right now. No way.” 

Jon made a noise Tim would normally associate with a disobedient teenager being punished, to his mild astonishment. “What exactly do you propose we_ do, _ then, if we’re making decisions as a democracy now?” 

Tim leveled a glare at him. “Okay, you need to _ cool _ it, Walking Dead. You’ve been clinically deceased for the past six months, you can’t just pop back up out of your grave and start calling the shots again out of nowhere.” 

Shrinking back into his pillows, Jon cleared his throat uncomfortably. Basira, meanwhile, regarded both of them with one eyebrow cocked. There was a pause, then: “You know what, you have a point,” she said decisively, and tucked the statement back into her bag. “Let’s take this slow. I’m gonna go get water. Maybe check in with one of the nurses.” 

Before the Unknowing, Tim had been suspicious of Basira, to put things mildly. Of course, he was suspicious of everyone, and that hadn’t really stopped, but when he found out she’d walked herself out of the chaos of that wax museum through sheer force of will, he had no choice but to respect her for it. With Basira, the nice thing was that respect went both ways. He got the impression she used to think he was pretty unhinged, and she probably wasn’t far off, but after she drove him to rehab a couple of times they’d managed to set things pretty square, through halting conversations at stoplights with the windows of her old sedan fogging up.

Right now Tim could guess what she was after: A damage report. And, well, he’d known the old Jon a lot longer. He gave her a nod. “I’ll babysit.”

“Oh, come on,” Jon muttered, petulant, as she swept out of the room, one corner of her mouth quirked upward. 

“Back in a tick.”

Tim saluted. 

Once the door was shut again, Tim felt Jon’s full attention before he looked at him. That wasn’t a new sensation, and it had definitely been a while since Tim had taken the entire brunt of it, but somehow he had the suspicion it was… _ More _ than it used to be. It didn’t help that Jon could have been cast in a horror film; the old worm scars crept up one side of his face in a stippled pattern, a mirror of Tim’s own, and there was a new crescent-shaped mark that hit the edge of his hairline, where strands of grey and white stood out sharply against the natural black. It occurred to Tim he could have sworn before that Jon’s eyes were black, too, instead of the dulled, greenish color of the irises now. And he was thinner, even more so than after that whole kidnapping debacle. The bones in his wrists and collar jutted strangely. 

“So what happened,” Jon asked without preamble. The air crackled softly, but Tim didn’t feel the usual tug, so he suspended getting angry, for now. 

He sighed, popped his knuckles. “Million dollar question, right there. What do you remember?” 

“You,” Jon said simply, and Tim had to take a breath when he looked up, because his regard was so intense. Jon had_ never _ looked people in the eye before this. “I remember you, with the detonator, there was… A spotlight on you, somehow, I think. Or maybe I imagined it.” He became distant, almost wistful. “Then… Dreaming, mostly.”

“Dreaming?” Tim prompted with some effort.

Jon shook his head, hunching in on himself, and the spell subsided. “Nothing good. I… I’m glad you’re, well. I’m glad you’re here. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I remember it, ah, it hurt.” 

Shifting uncomfortably, Tim shrugged. “Yeah. It did.” He chewed his lip for a second, and then forced himself to straighten up. “Anyway. Let’s see, er, since you’ve been out…” He ticked off a few items on his fingers. “Martin’s plan worked, Elias is in jail. That spooky ship captain Peter Lukas is the new head of the Institute, and now Martin’s his assistant or something, so he never talks to anybody. Which is _bollocks, _ I know,” he added as Jon opened his mouth indignantly. “But, I guess the Institute used to lay pretty low in the whole, you know, creepy fear god pissing contest? Except then we went and fucked up the Stranger's whole shop, and now all the other _factions _ are scrambling to make us their bitch. So, we’re all stuck living in the Archives, because otherwise we'd get jumped on the bloody street. But you’re already used to that.” Tim spread his hands. “There you have it, really. Everyone's after our hides.” 

“O-kay,” said Jon slowly, staring at his sheets, obviously processing. He lifted one of the strings of his hospital gown and Tim watched, weirdly fascinated, as he began to chew on it, seemingly unconscious of the action. “So Martin just-?” 

“Fucked off, yeah.” He crossed his arms. “I think he’s got some big scheme to protect everyone, but he’s been cagey about it the handful of times I've spoken to him, and also I don't care. It's still mental, whatever he's trying to do.” 

“Right.” Jon took the string out of his mouth and glared at it as if offended to find it there. “Okay. So-” He glanced up at Tim, hesitant. “Basira told me, a-about Daisy. But she, she didn’t mention…” 

Tim suppressed another shiver, worked hard to swallow. “Melanie,” he acknowledged thickly. “Yeah. That’s complicated.” 

Jon wrung his hands, eyeing him nervously. “Er… Is she... Gone?” 

Tim turned away, glowering at the I.V. stand beside the bed. “Hard to say. I saw it, and I still don’t…” He dug his nails into one thigh and fought back his gag reflex, cleared his throat. “Remember how I said every creepy-crawly motherfucker in London is out to get us, unless we stay in the archives?" When Jon nodded, he continued with some difficulty. "Whatever protection we apparently have down there, it's- It's not foolproof." He stopped, bit his lip and tried again. "When it happened I was out at the gym, funny enough. Never used to go. But the lease ran out on my flat, and the Institute's showering facilities leave much to be desired...” 

“All right," Jon prompted, "so you… Weren’t there, when…” 

Tim looked at him flatly. “You ever read a statement about Jared Hopworth?” 

“Oh.” Jon went pale. “Shit.” 

“Yeah. He uh. He sort of…” Tim took a deep breath. “Ate her. Not in like, pieces, just. Down the hatch, l-like a python.” 

“Good _ lord,” _ exclaimed Jon, physically recoiling. “You _ saw-?” _

“Got back just in time,” Tim muttered. _ I distracted her, _ he didn’t say. _ She was tearing into him before I got there. _ Martin had phoned him half out of his mind with panic, warning him to stay away, lay low, so of course he’d gone charging back to the Institute as fast as he could. “_Fucking _ idiot,” he hissed to himself, and brought a fist down on his knee.

Jon floundered for a moment, one arm halfway extended towards him, hesitant, and then drew it back. “I, I, I’m sure it’s not your _ fault, _ Tim-”

“No, the point is that I wanted it to be _me,”_ he snarled, kicking at the frame of the hospital bed and making it judder. “_Each_ time I wanted it to be me, the Stranger, the Flesh, fuck ‘em all, have everyone take a shot at me and who gives a shit if it lands as long as I can _hurt_ them first.” Wrestling to keep his voice down, he curled in on himself, clutching two handfuls of his pullover. “Except I must've done a hundred brushes with death by now, and I don’t- I don’t fucking want it anymore, okay, I don’t want to die! I've put too much fucking _work_ into staying alive for the past six months because I thought you weren't coming back! So- where the hell does that _leave_ me, you know?” He smacked the bedcovers with an open palm. “Christ! I _hate_ you, you always make me tell you shit!” 

“I- I’m sorry, I didn’t know- I didn’t mean to, I just, I wanted to know if Melanie- If there was, was anything, I could…” Jon stammered miserably, his hands flitting about, useless until he finally thrust them into his lap. “Sorry, I’m sorry.” 

Tim wasn’t even sure if that had been a compulsion or not, but he said nothing more, just shook his head jerkily. They sat in silence for a minute, Tim pressing at his temples, Jon fidgeting with the edge of his sheets until finally, without warning, he threw them back. “Right then," he said, too brittle. "Basira’s taking too long.” Gripping the I.V. stand, he pushed out of bed before Tim could react, and nearly took a header as his legs buckled. 

“Hey, whoa!” Tim moved instinctively to catch him- and then had to turn away as soon as he'd grabbed Jon by the arm to avoid catching more than a glimpse of the esteemed Archivist’s entire naked ass. “For god’s sake, have a little modesty,” he groaned, hauling Jon back to the bed despite his protests.

Jon slumped heavily against the edge of the mattress, shaky and fuming. “Oh, get over yourself! I don’t expect anyone brought me any _real_ clothes instead of this glorified apron?!” 

“Hardly thought about shopping for a dead guy on my way over here,” Tim spat back. “Your old stash got a bunch of gore on them, we had to bin the lot.” 

“Great. Brilliant.” Sighing, Jon pinched the bridge of his nose. “Don’t suppose you could lend me anything.” 

“I don’t have much your size.” Tim replied coldly.

Jon rolled his eyes. “Oh, sod it, I’ll wear your shirt like a dress. Anything to spare you the indignity of having to _behold_ my bare arse.” 

“I-” Tim paused. Narrowed his eyes. “Hang on, was that an_ actual _ joke?" 

Jon turned away irritably. “Wouldn’t you like to know.” 

And then Tim found himself laughing, although what exactly was so funny about the whole situation he couldn’t tell. The joke certainly wasn’t any good, and two minutes ago he’d been ready to break something, possibly Jon's face, but he couldn’t quite help the laugh bubbling out of him in disbelief. After a moment Jon was smiling too, ducking his head like he might get punished for it if someone saw, but smiling nevertheless. Tim noticed his front teeth were crooked. 

Eventually, Jon boosted himself clumsily back onto the bed, leaving his feet dangled a few centimeters off the floor. He began to pick at the tape holding his I.V. needle in place. “Thank you for- For bringing me up to speed,” he said. 

Tim raised an eyebrow at him. “Huh. Don’t think you’ve ever thanked me for anything before.” 

“Well- you have. So, I thought.” He flapped a hand, then went back to picking. 

Tim remembered the click of the detonator’s button under his thumb. The great, whooshing rumble as the building started to blast apart. He felt the raw, wild grin on his face, the satisfaction of a knife buried right where it belongs in the back of an enemy. _ Thank you for this. _

“I’m still angry with you,” he asserted. “You stalked me for months, suspected me of actual murder, never once put your faith in my character or even my competence. Plus, pretty much all of this clusterfuck is your fault _directly.”_

Having divested himself of the tape, Jon drew the needle out of his arm without flinching. "... You're right." 

Tim sighed, ran a hand through his hair. “I _know._ I’m just. Giving you a brief grace period, because you died." And, well, he was. That, and Martin’s choked up voice in his head: _ They, um, they found him on top of you. You were in a bad way, of course, but, i-it blocked the worst of the damage… _

He’d refused to hear any more at the time, furious he’d survived, terrified of what it meant, loathing the very idea he might have Jonathan Sims to thank for his life after everything the man had already done to ruin it so thoroughly. Later, Basira had mentioned quietly that Jon had no heartbeat. That had seemed _fair, _ even if Tim was adamant that it didn’t redeem him. It still didn’t, in his books, and of course, now that the Archivist was awake again he was no doubt hellbound to take this increasingly shitty situation and make it supernaturally worse.

“You’d better not fuck this up, by the way,” he stated blandly, watching while Jon pressed the edge of the bedsheet to the spot where he’d removed the I.V. 

“What?” He peered at Tim in confusion. A small, sluggish spot of blood collected on the cloth. “I don’t-”

Tim swept his arm out in a broad gesture. “This. Being back. We’re in some deep shit right now, and we can’t afford to have you blundering around, whining about how you never chose this, jetting off to fucking America on some stupid scavenger hunt, any of it. Whatever your self-centered little issues are, you fix them. Quietly. Or I’ll throw you to the wolves myself, I swear on your life. You understand?” 

Jon watched him through the whole admonishment with his wide, sunken eyes. “Yes,” he breathed. “All right.” 

“Good. _Good._” He paused for a minute, considering. "... Who was Georgie? I honestly didn't think you had any friends left." 

Jon adopted a tight, wan expression. "My ex," he said heavily.

"Ah. Right." In retrospect, Tim thought, he probably could have guessed.

Standing unceremoniously, he strode over to the door and cracked it open. Basira was in the hall, standing just close enough to the door that Tim gave her a sardonic look when he stuck his head out. “Nurses give you trouble?”

“Oh, yeah. Plenty,” she replied breezily, and lifted a small plastic cup of water. “Had to bribe them like mad for this.” 

He smirked. “'It's coming out of your paycheck. I expect you want a turn to cross-examine?” 

She rolled her eyes- He'd sprung enough cop quips on her by now to probably last the rest of her lifetime - but nodded, and he stood aside to let her enter. “Don’t let him get up,” he added. “It’s one of those backless hospital gowns. I got an eyeful.”

“Jesus.” Basira’s eyebrows shot up. 

“Yeah, I’m gonna go pick up some joggers at the gift shop or something, for our sake. Pity we can’t just smuggle him out in a cat carrier.” 

She shrugged. “Not with that attitude.” 

Tim let his mouth twist into a grin as he left, leaving the door to swing shut behind him. As soon as he found the shop in this blinding white maze, he was going to buy the absolute ugliest set of lounge clothes he could get his hands on. 

**Author's Note:**

> MY ENDLESS GRATITUDE to the mods of the RQBB, Flammenkobold, Arazsya (Duckpond), & FushigiNoKuniNo! Thanks also to Mad_Maudlin, flowersforgraves, FriendlyCybird, Shoulder_Devil, eyemoji, InhumanByte, Linn, my dear friend Mabhatter even though she'll probably never read this, and my lovely partner Spicylavadog for cheerleading, proofreading, brainstorming, and helping me work around roadblocks. And to my dad, who bet me $20 I couldn't write 2500 words of this in two days. I won!
> 
> Once again, please check out my artist Mala's [wonderful work! ](https://malaroots.tumblr.com/) And also the [piece](https://malaroots.tumblr.com/) she did especially for this fic.


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